


How do you like your stories?

by yourlibrarian



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, Meta, Season arcs, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:04:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6717331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In musing about how much I enjoy reading fanfic, I was thinking of the profic/fanfic differences that to me generally come out in favor of fanfic. And this is mostly because fanfic can do what profic does, but the reverse is usually not true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How do you like your stories?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 29, 2007

In musing about how much I enjoy reading fanfic, I was thinking of the profic/fanfic differences that to me generally come out in favor of fanfic. And this is mostly because fanfic can do what profic does, but the reverse is usually not true. One thing, for example, that I can't ever imagine seeing in a tie-in novel is a truly dark story. And by that I don't mean darksex/torture stories (which I'd also not expect to see in a trade paperback). I mean stories where the characters are so wrecked or the story has such a bleak, horrifying ending that you could be pretty sure you'd never see that in the canon source either. I still remember that episode 2 of Angel had to be rewritten because the original story had a dirty cop dying of a drug overdose, which to me does not a particularly dark story make. On the other hand, if that character was your lead or one of your regulars? Then we're talking.

To me the difference in a dark story and a gritty one is how much it affects you, not if you go "Huh, what an interesting plot twist." As much as I don't like horror stories -- and the movie "Seven" made me squeamish -- I watched it because I'd heard great reviews about its ending, and it didn't disappoint me. I thought that movie laid its groundwork well and led one (if not both) characters to a certain inevitable conclusion. A conclusion, I'd add, that there's no going back from. Darkfics are, in my definition, tragedies in the classic sense only without the tragedy's resolution. I've read more than one SPN story that hit me that way. In fact, one was so awful (in its storyline, not the writing) I made a note to myself to avoid reading any more Evil!Sam stories because one of those was enough. I really don't want to see the total destruction of both characters. I'd also like to hope Dean would never let it get to that point, but I think you can make a valid argument that from what we know in canon, he might.

And again, profic? Is never going to go there even in a show like SPN which, to me, brings the ultimate dark. The Buffyverse, for example, had plenty of potential dark. It wasn't just the monsters and the evil-bending characters like the Aurelian vamps, but the moral dilemmas involved. However, I think while SPN is making more of its moral dilemmas (in S2 they were fairly explicit) the show brings an added layer of dark in its twisted family history. What American Gothic did for the South, I think SPN does for the Midwest, which is somewhat more interesting because it's always been seen as more “wholesome” and the heart of American values (whatever those are these days).

There's also a sort of Catch-22 the leads have -- they can try to escape one another, but there just is no normal for them any more than there could be for a character like Angel. And it isn’t just because the Winchesters know about what goes bump in the night and feel compelled to do something to help others (as Buffy does). It’s because they are increasingly crossing the line into killing humans and becoming morally suspect, and this in only their second season. The most egregious boundary crossing I can remember in the Buffyverse is when Angel kills Drogyn to further his plans. Granted, it seems he probably had little chance to save him, but would he have done so if the victim had been Connor? No. He made a choice, but that was in the final episodes of the series. The choice Dean makes in BUaBS to allow deaths to occur on his watch if it means any chance of saving Sam, is not unlike Buffy's re: Angelus in the same season. Someone has probably already meta’ed this, but it strikes me that one dropped thread this season was why BUaBS happened at all. It appeared it was all about testing Dean –- what would he do, or not do, when confronted with such a terrible choice? And once that was known by team YED, were his choices taken into account in the finale? How did knowing that about Dean help the other side? Certainly Angelus felt Buffy's continued delays would work in his favor and that she wouldn't be able to kill him in the end. So did the audience.

Getting back to the topic of darkness though, it seems to me nothing can ever be as dark as the primal source of it –- the conflicting emotions and goals of family members, and the way they must balance personal wishes with group benefits. I think this is why Angelus continues to be considered one of the Buffyverse’s best villains, and why there is so much storytelling that deals with “evil twins.” Everyone knows the darkness is there, but if you’ve got a heroic character (or even sidekick) in an ongoing story, you don’t want to risk dead-ending the character in a storyline that can’t end well. It has to be teased out, hinted at, retconned in some sort of AU, or otherwise approached crablike in order to be told at all. You’re especially not going to get that in tie-ins which are not designed to challenge their audience. But you can do it in fanfic, because the stories aren’t official and there is no continuity to concern yourself with. The wrecked character in one fic can be whole and happy and even picking out curtains in the fic next door. What fanfic can do so well is follow up on the implications of what we see in canon, something which even the best continuity driven series often don’t do well, and follow them to their many possible conclusions. One of the interesting differences to me is that in Buffy, the darkness was carried largely by grey adjunct characters (until S6, which is still unpopular with many people). But in SPN, there haven't, so far, been any secondary liminal characters. Rather, it's both Sam and Dean that actually harbor that darkness themselves.


End file.
